The Talisman Ring by Georgette Heyer Page B

suddenly put forward his ears at a flutter of white seen fleetingly in the gloom of a thicket and shied violently across the road, she gave a sob of pure fright, and was nearly unseated. She pulled Rufus up, but his plunge had done all that was necessary to set the troublesome bandbox free. It slipped from the strap and went rolling away over the snow, and came to rest finally quite close to the thicket at the side of the road.
    Eustacie, patting Rufus’s neck with a hand which, though meant to convey reassurance, was actually trembling more than he was, looked after her property with dismay. She did not feel that she could abandon it (which she would have liked to have done), for in spite of being afraid of nothing, she was extremely loth to dismount and pick it up. She sat still for a few minutes, intently staring at the thicket. Rufus stared, too, with his head up and his ears forward. Nothing seemed to be stirring, however, and Eustacie, telling herself that the Headless Horseman was only a legend, and that the monstrous Serpent (or Dragon) had flourished nearly two hundred years ago and must surely be dead by now, gritted her teeth, and dismounted. She was disgusted to find that her knees were shaking, so to give herself more courage she pulled the duelling pistol out of the holster and grasped it firmly in her right hand.
    Rufus, though suspicious of the thicket, allowed her to lead him up to the bandbox. She had just stooped to pick it up when the shrill neigh of a pony not five yards distant startled her almost out of her wits. She gave a scream of terror, saw something move in the shadow, and the next minute was struggling dementedly in the hold of a man who had seemed to pounce upon her from nowhere. She could not scream again because a hand was clamped over her mouth, and when she pulled the trigger of her pistol nothing happened. A sinewy arm was round her; she was half lifted, half dragged into the cover of the thicket; and heard a rough voice behind her growl: ‘Hit her over the head, blast the wench!’
    Her terrified eyes, piercing the gloom, saw the dim outline of a face above her. Her captor said: ‘I’ll be damned if I do!’ in the unmistakable accents of a gentleman, and bent over her, and added softly: ‘I’m sorry, but you mustn’t screech. If I take my hand away, will you be quiet – quite quiet?’
    She nodded. At the first sound of his voice, which was oddly attractive, a large measure of her fright had left her. Now, as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she saw that he was quite a young man, and, judging from the outline of his profile against the moonlit sky, a very personable young man.
    The voice of the man behind her spoke again. ‘Adone do! She’ll be the ruin o’ we! Let me shut her mouth for her!’
    Eustacie made a strangled sound in her throat and tried to bring her hands up to clutch at the young man’s arm. The barrel of her pistol, which she was till clutching, gleamed in the moonlight, and caught the attention of her captor, who said under his breath: ‘If you let that pistol off I’ll murder you! Ned, take the gun away from her!’
    A heavy hand wrenched it out of her grasp; the rough voice said: ‘It ain’t loaded. If you won’t do more, tie her up with a gag in her mouth!’
    ‘No, no, she’s much too pretty,’ said the young man, taking the pistol and slipping it into the pocket of his frieze coat. ‘You won’t squeak, will you, darling?’
    As well as she could Eustacie shook her head. The hand left her mouth and patted her cheek. ‘Good girl! Don’t be frightened: I swear I won’t hurt you!’
    Eustacie, who had been almost suffocated, gasped thankfully: ‘I thought you were the Headless Horseman!’
    ‘You thought I was what?’
    ‘The Headless Horseman.’
    He laughed. ‘Well, I’m not.’
    ‘No, I can see you are not. But why did you seize me like that? What are you doing here?’
    ‘If it comes to that, what are you doing here?’
    ‘I